Architectural detail

[noiseboy]

And just to start I have a question for all you seasoned architectural types. Having seen the St Nicholas church project by p_de_clerk

http://vbulletin.newtek.com/showthread.php?t=20880

how would you go about creating the window detail in lightwave? I get the impression that the modelling in this case has been done in AutoCAD. With reference to a personal project that I've been meaning to start for sometime (see attached image) how would you go about generated all the windows and window detail, would you boolean out the basic shapes and then detail the windows themselves as separate items. I would be very interested in any hints, suggestions or advice (apart from give up now) on trying to build this type of architecture frm scratch.

Cheers Colin

[ingo]

Me thinks the easiest way is to do it in Photoshop. Make the selection and save it as a path, than save this as Illustrator document and import it; thats how it works in FormZ for me.
Otherwise you can load this picture in the backround in modeller and modell the details, the so called image-based modelling.

[JML]

if you use Lw modeller, I would you use the splines to get outer shape helping yourself from the pic, and the inside elements in nurbs..
I would create the window from a lot a different elements.. not just 2 or 3 big one..

and you may want to have a bigger reference image...

[noiseboy]

Thanks Ingo and jmnewtek, so for the tracery (if thats the right word) in the windows, you would create the paths for each piece and then extrude a cross-section along the paths?
and you may want to have a bigger reference image...

and I thought I was being clever by giving you a smaller picture to save bandwidth
;)

I'll work on this some more...

[Jirapong]

There's a number of way to do that in LW. First, forget Boolean operation. It might work well in object oriented 3d programs, like FormZ and Autocad. Boolean will creates messy geometry and it will be so difficult to work in LW. If I were you, I would rail polygons along paths that were either made in Illustrator or in LW.

[noiseboy]

I would rail polygons along paths that were either made in Illustrator or in LW.
rail extrude is fine for simple paths, but what would you do with multiple paths, connected together? I think I'm asking too much or trying to do too much in one go.
Back to the drawing screeen or maybe I should stick to sound.

Colin

[noiseboy]

just thought I'd follow my ramblings up. I've dropped the path extrude method in favour of using outlines in illustrator to generate closed polys instead of splines, then used Vertibevel to form the shape of the tracery. Its working for relatively simple shapes, just need to see if it will scale to more complex patterns. only downside for me was I had to go back to LW7.5c since Vertibevel doesnt play well with LW8 ( not for me anyway)